This Crazy Japanese Ad Featuring A Double-Barreled ‘Shrimp Cannon’ Is Predictably Addictive

Most cellphone carriers looking to advertise their data services usually follow a well-trodden marketing route, using words like "unlimited" and obvious metaphors to emphasize speed. Japan's biggest carrier NTT Docomo Inc. has taken the metaphor idea to the extreme.

It sees two "TV chefs" load up a highly-pressurized double-barreled cannon with shrimp, to fire through bread crumbs, egg, oil and a flamethrower — with the action set to a suitable death metal soundtrack. Their meal cooks in seconds flat. And it also hasn't taken long for the ad to notch up an impressive 6 million views on YouTube.

The Wall Street Journal's CMO Today says the video, which sees the shrimp fired down two separate lanes, is meant to be representative of the two bandwidths that its LTE mobile data uses.

Whether Japanese viewers make that connection remains to be seen, but the company will be hoping its left-field advertising approach will endear some consumers to the brand, which could go some way to turning around its recent sharp earnings decline.